Category: Cornucopia
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Where are the Mormon Pre-Schools?
Although he goes to nursery in the Wakefield Ward each Sunday, my son attends pre-school twice a week at the Braddock Baptist Church in Annandale, Virginia.
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Dinner Theater, or Do We Consume Media?
It was late spring in London, and just as the weather outside started warming up, things inside started heating up, too.
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Rosalynde Welch, a new Guest Blogger
(Now updated!) We’re very happy to announce our newest guest blogger: Rosalynde Welch.
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Textual Healing
OK. I’m not sure if that title bears exactly directly on what this post is about, but as an R&B fan I had to use it before my time runs out. I’m a guest-blogger, which means I’m only supposed to get two weeks. I’m not sure if today is my last day or if I’ve…
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Christ and the Cosmic Conflict of Interest
We lawyers have several disadvantages in trying to live the gospel. For one, everyone seems to hate us. However, there is one perk that almost offsets all the drawbacks of being a lawyer/disciple. That is that we have greater access to legal metaphors for the atonement.
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Are We Really a Peculiar People, or are we Just a Bunch of Odd Ducks?
We LDS like to refer to ourselves as a peculiar people.
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Where the Mormons Are
This map, from the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, shows the largest religious denomination in each US county. This does not mean that the majority of the county belongs to the denomination, only that no other denomination is larger. My guess is that Hancock County, Illinois (Nauvoo) will be the first purple county…
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Morphy, Steinitz & Mormonism
Paul Morphy was a New Orleans born chess genius who wowed the world (or at least that small and geeky portion of it that cares about chess) with his aggressive and imaginative play in the decade before the Civil War.
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You’re Oppressed, I’m Oppressed (let’s call the whole thing off)
If you’ve spent five minutes in the bloggernacle, you’ve heard a liberal-leaning Latter-day Saint bemoan the constant conservative harping among members of the church.
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A Disturbance in the Force
I was feeling a little jealous of all of these Bloggernacle get-togethers, so I flew to Washington D.C. to meet Matt, Nate, and Kaimi.
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Can a Good Mormon be a Meritocrat?
I’m not a big fan of much of David Brooks’s writings, as he is often too Manichean to be useful (here’s a good parody). But in the opening pages of Bobos in Paradise, Brooks does a nice job of describing the shift in American culture from a class structure based on lineage or money to…
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Chess Anyone?
Times and Seasons is my main way of wasting time these days, but I do have other vices, one of them being chess.
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Is Yasir Arafat Dead?
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (Psalms 122:6) News reports are rampant with rumors that Yasir Arafat is either dead, in a coma or on life support. What seems certain is that Arafat’s end is nigh.
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The King James Bible has competition
This is off-topic, but I thought I’d put in a word for the 9/11 Commission Report.
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Michael Moore and the Gadianton Robbers
George W. Bush, in my mind, is very much like Bill Clinton. Both men seem to have the ability to make otherwise sane people on the other side of the political fence become nutcases.
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Religion as Secular Epistemology
Well, we have ourselves a new president. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A week or two ago, Brandy Siegfried mentioned Ron Suskind’s article “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency.” I didn’t read the article, but I heard Suskind talk about it on NPR, and found it very interesting.
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The Election and SSM
I have generally avoided posting on same-sex marriage, and I am not attempting to initiate another debate on the merits. But I believe that one of the huge stories of the presidential election will be the importance of this issue. While most people I know thought this election would be a referendum on the war…
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Utah presidential politics
Not that anyone needs any more suspense tonight, but I’ll be keeping a curious eye on Utah’s election results.
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A technical hiccough
Our internet host is having some problems keeping up with traffic on this incredibly busy day. The problem is exacerbated since they’re also hosting some official election supervisor sites in Florida. We’ve had one hiccough so far today — about an hour and a half of down time — and we may see more. Just…
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O Quanta Qualia–More Musings on the Sabbath
Nate’s post on the Sabbath returns me to some thoughts on the Sabbath I’ve been kicking around for a while. Earlier this fall, as I was looking for music for my ward choir to do, I considered Healey Willan’s setting of “O Quanta Qualia.” The text is as follows: Oh, what their joys and their…
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Quick note
We’ve been getting a ton of spam lately from a new batch of spammers using new .info sites. So I just added a general moderation rule for any .info sites. I also added a specific unblock for danithew’s site — his posts should go through okay. I don’t think we have any other real commenters…
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Moderation In Most Things
Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. (Phillipians 4:5) We have often heard the saying “moderation in all things.” But the words moderate, moderation and moderately only appear sparingly in the scriptures and the phrase “moderation in all things” does not appear at all. Then again, on second glance,…
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Sin and Ethics
One of the points of contention between believers and skeptics has to do with the question of morality. Roughly speaking, the exchange goes something like this: Believer: God is the source of morality. Without a belief in God one cannot have a belief in morality. Therefore skeptics are immoral. QED. Skeptic: Nonsense! There are lots…
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Spirit, Body, Brain
Thank you, Adam, for the intro, and T&S for the guest-spot. It’s a sacrifice for my other little blog, but I can really use the extra income. Today i’m thinking about my job and what it’s doing to me. I work on the tenth floor of a not very big building in downtown Salt Lake.…
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Reverence
We had an excellent discussion of reverence in our combined Priesthood-Relief Society meeting yesterday. At the end of the meeting, I made a comment which provoked mixed reactions after the meeting, and now I am wondering about that comment.
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The Question You Should Never Ask
“Are you pregnant?” In the past two weeks, for some reason I have had four people ask me this question and variations on it: “Are you and Kristen expecting another?” “Are you going to have another baby?” “When is the next baby coming?”
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Bloggernacle, The Movie: A Casting Game
Is there anything more fun than a casting game? You know, “who would be the perfect actor to play Joseph Smith?” or “who would be some good actors for a Book of Mormon movie“? And now, ladies and gents, we have new fuel for the fire. You’ve all seen the pictures of the blog party…
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The Wedding Feast
The metaphor of a marriage is often used to describe the relationship between the Savior and His Church. The Savior is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride. This metaphor is useful because the Church can instruct husbands that they should love their wives with all their hearts; to be willing to give up…
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Thoughts From A Professional Sabbath Breaker
Thanks to the macinations of the plaintiff’s attorneys, I am spending most of my sabbath today ensconsed in my office with the Bankruptcy Code. For better or for worse, I have a job where Sundays at work are hardly unexpected and although I do my best to avoid them, it isn’t really possible to work…
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Conversations with a seven-year-old, continued
7YO: What if Korihor was a talking bat? Me: (Trying not to laugh) Umm, what? 7YO: He would die! Me: Oh? 7YO: Yep — because bats see with their ears, and they have to use sonar. And so Korihor couldn’t use any more sonar after he got cursed. Can’t argue with that, can I?